Tag Archives: commodity

This TED talk by Steven Johnson into the generation of ideas is sure to get you spending some extra time at your local coffee shop or dawdling a few minutes longer at the water cooler.

Johnson provides a wonderful insight into the benefits of team work and the open discussion of ideas. He dispels the idea of the ‘epiphany’ and credits good ideas to an intricate network formed through the sharing of ideas over time. The idea could have been building for a while, taking many years to form, but is often refined and polished with contributions from other networks and sources.

With the recent release of facebook movie The Social Network, where intellectual property becomes a precious, money generating commodity, it’s no wonder we protect our ideas with laws and contracts. But in the greater scheme of technological and scientific progression, are we hindering our potential to grow and learn by limiting how much of our knowledge we share?